This past Tuesday, Keystone Research Center co-sponsored “Manufacturing a Better Paying Pennsylvania” with the D.C.-based Century Foundation, the Steel Valley Authority, and others. The event laid out the case for the U.S. and Pennsylvania to implement comprehensive strategies for growing high-wage manufacturing. This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op ed lays out the basic argument.

Gov. Wolf has proposed a severance tax on the extraction of natural gas in Pennsylvania to provide funding for public schools. Lawmakers in both parties have introduced severance tax bills every year since 2009, and every year the gas drillers have successfully fought the tax, spending $46.8 million on lobbying since 2007. Much of the industry’s lobbying money has gone into manufacturing a narrative, built on a foundation of myths, about the economic benefits of drilling and the fragility of the industry.

WESA in Pittsburgh has a radio feature airing today on union organizing among contingent faculty in higher education. It includes some excerpts from an interview with me. You can listen to it and access a transcript here.

My colleague Diana Polson brought my attention to Harold Meyerson's new story in The American Prospecthighlighting Pittsburgh as a city with exciting young progressive political leadership and labor-community alliances (e.g., Pittsburgh United). Pittsburgh deserves the credit as do councilwoman Natalia Rudiak, Mayor Peduto, and SEIU 32BJ, which received shout outs in the story.

There are three central challenges facing U.S. manufacturing today: wages are too low, employers invest too little in their workers, and the sector lacks meaningful credentials or job-matching institutions allowing dislocated workers to find new manufacturing jobs that capitalize on their skills.

As you probably know, the United Auto Workers (UAW) lost a union election at a Chattanooga Volkswagen plant last month by a vote of 712 to 646 (53% to 47%). My heart goes out to the workers and UAW leaders who put heart and soul into achieving a different result.

I was taken aback by the vote, I have to admit. So it has taken me a couple of weeks to process it.

The Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch had an uplifting column this past Sunday on Saturday's "Moral March" in Raleigh, N.C. It was the South's largest protest march since Dr. Martin Luther King and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965.